CHAPTER 31: GRANDMASTER NINE

Mira slung her rifle across her back with the calm expression of a seasoned soldier.

"Where?" she asked, her tone clipped, eyes sharp as flint beneath her visor.

Ahce handed over the coordinates she had traced the night before, lines of code, and encrypted routes compressed into a single data chip.

"Outskirts of City D," she replied. "Near an abandoned bio-lab zone."

Ryo’s brow furrowed, a ripple of unease breaking through his usually stoic face. "That’s blacklisted territory, Miss Nine. Even Zeiren teams don’t set foot there without clearance."

"I don’t care," Ahce said quietly, the words like a blade’s edge. "He’s there."

Before the others could protest, the elevator doors behind them hissed open, exhaling cold metallic air. Heavy footsteps followed, echoing down the steel corridor. Instantly, every agent in the hangar straightened, conversation dying in their throats.

Director Rave, Head of Zeiren, stepped into view. His presence consumed the space before he even spoke. Tall and broad-shouldered, with silver hair slicked back like tempered steel, he moved with the measured grace of someone accustomed to command. The insignia of Zeiren gleamed on his collar, sharp as the lines of his jaw.

"Grandmaster Nine," Ravel said, his voice low, controlled, and lethal in its calm. "Going somewhere?"

Ahce bowed slightly, her posture betraying respect but not submission. "With permission, sir, I intend to take temporary leave for personal..."

"Denied."

The word hit her like a slap.

"Sir?"

Ravel closed the distance between them, the sound of his boots like the ticking of a countdown. In his gloved hand was a thin black folder, unmarked but heavy with implication.

"An order came in last night," he said, extending it toward her. "High priority. Paid in full by an anonymous client. The request was directed to you, specifically."

Ash exchanged a wary glance with Mira. "Specifically to Miss Nine?"

Ravel nodded once. "Your target is not a person this time... but an experiment."

Ahce’s fingers tightened around the folder. She flipped it open, and the air seemed to thin. Inside were pages of classified data. Diagrams of twisted anatomy, chemical formulas that bled across the page, and photographs, human figures with animal-like eyes, claws, and bone structures warped by unnatural fusion.

The title at the top of the page froze her pulse.

[PROJECT: TAINTED BLOOD.]

Her breath caught.

Human gene modification. Animal DNA integration. Enhanced strength. Extended lifespan. Failure rate: 87%.

Those deemed unfit were labeled feral. Others, untraceable.

Ravel’s voice cut through her dread. "The experiment site is believed to be located within the ruins of City D. Specifically, Sector 9 of the restricted zone."

Her heart turned to ice.

Sector 9.

That was where Richard’s last transmission had come from.

She steadied her voice. "You want me to locate it... and what, destroy it?"

"Gather intel first," Ravel said. "If it still exists, retrieve a viable sample. If not..." He paused, his gaze unflinching. "Erase everything."

Her grip on the folder trembled. "And if there are survivors?"

"Collateral," he said simply. "You know the rules, Nine."

She wanted to argue, to tell him that not everything could be written off as collateral, that one of those survivors might be him. But to say that would unravel everything she’d built. So she swallowed her words, straightened her spine, and nodded.

"Understood."

Ravel studied her a moment longer, his eyes cold yet faintly knowing.

"You leave tonight," he said. "Don’t disappoint us, Grandmaster Nine."

When he turned and strode away, silence reclaimed the hangar. The hum of machinery returned slowly, like breath after suffocation.

Ahce looked down at the folder, its black ink bleeding into her gloves.

Ash broke the silence first. "So this ’experiment’..."

"It’s where my husband is," she whispered. "It has to be."

Ryo stepped forward, his voice steady. "Then we’re bringing him back."

Her gaze hardened, steel over fire. "We find the experiment. We complete the mission. But we bring him back."

Even Mira, whose eyes rarely betrayed emotion, gave a solemn nod. "Understood, Miss Nine."

The turbines of the stealth craft roared to life in the distance, their sound like a promise, or a warning. Fate, it seemed, was pulling its cruel strings again.

They never reached City D.

Plans changed the moment they crossed the borders of City A. Shina forged travel papers while Ahce rerouted Zeiren’s surveillance systems. Heading directly into City D would have raised suspicions at Headquarters, too direct, too personal. Instead, she led her team to City L, a decaying strip of land between D and E7, an unmarked zone no longer claimed by any government.

From the air, City L looked like a scar carved across the earth, a graveyard of concrete and steel devoured by vines. No signal towers. No lights. Only fog and silence stretching into infinity.

Locals called the forest beyond it The Black Forest. They said its trees whispered. That those who entered never returned.

But satellite scans told a different story, hidden energy pulses deep beneath the forest, matching the exact frequency linked to Project Tainted Blood. And near those signals... Richard’s last tracker blinked once before dying.

Ahce stood beside the vehicle, her gaze fixed on the shadowed treeline. The air was thick, damp, metallic, the taste of iron and rain.

"Miss Nine," Shina whispered, voice trembling. "Are you sure this is the right way? We’re off-grid. Not even HQ can locate us here."

"That’s exactly what I want," Ahce said.

Shina hesitated, eyes flicking toward the forest. "But the stories..."

"I know them," Ahce interrupted. "They’re meant to keep people out."

She didn’t add the truth, that she was afraid too. Not of the forest, but of what waited within it.

Ryo checked his pistol, scanning the treeline. "No contact since last night. We’re blind here. If something happens..."

"Then we adapt," Ahce cut him off. "Zeiren didn’t train us to run from shadows."

But even as she spoke, the wind shifted, carrying with it a sound. A low hum, rhythmic and deep, almost like a heartbeat beneath the soil. The trees swayed in unison, as though alive.

Mira raised her scanner. "There’s electromagnetic interference ahead. Not natural."

Ash exhaled slowly. "Guess the Black Forest isn’t just folklore."

And so, they stepped into the fog.

Each step forward felt heavier, as though gravity itself resisted them. The light dimmed unnaturally fast. One by one, their drones flickered and died, static hissing through their earpieces. The air vibrated with unseen energy, alien, almost sentient.

The deeper they went, the more reality seemed to warp.

Richard, where are you?

Trees towered impossibly high, bark blackened as if burned from within. Roots pulsed faintly beneath the soil, intertwining like veins. The mist shimmered with faint luminescence, revealing half-buried structures, collapsed tunnels, steel bones of forgotten laboratories, the skeletal remains of a civilization that had tried to play god.

"This doesn’t feel like Earth," Mira whispered.

She was right. It didn’t. It felt like they had crossed into another world, one caught between nightmare and memory.

Then came the first sound.

A growl, low, guttural, and wrong. It echoed from the fog to their right, then from above. Ryo turned his scope, breath catching.

"Targets... but they’re..."

Shapes emerged from the mist.

Human, but not.

Richard, please be safe.

Their limbs were too long, their eyes glowing a dull crimson. Flesh torn and patched with fur. Faces stretched into something neither man nor beast, expressions frozen between agony and rage.

Ahce raised her rifle, heart pounding.

Project Tainted Blood wasn’t abandoned.

It was waiting for them.